


Millie of l'Ecole Leman

by thenewradical



Category: Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewradical/pseuds/thenewradical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Millie attends finishing school, with diminishing results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Millie of l'Ecole Leman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_antichris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_antichris/gifts).



> Many thanks to inevitablewebreathe for the quick and helpful beta job!

_i. Millie Goes to School_

The school was in Switzerland.

Millie wasn’t sure how she felt about this. She had wanted to go to an English school, just like Book Millie. To be fair, she was still learning what it meant to be English versus other nationalities. It seemed to involve tea and hedges and Games. She didn’t know anything about her new school, l’Ecole Léman, much less Switzerland. Mountains, Christopher had told her vaguely and then wandered off.

She was having trouble getting much of anything out of Christopher. She had hoped he would tell her about his school experience, but all she got out of him was to avoid playing cricket. Millie had a feeling that he might be jealous that she was going to school while he was staying at the Castle. She liked the Castle, but it had that same empty, forbidding feeling that the Temple had. It might be powerful, but it didn’t seem like a fun place to grow up.

Millie sympathized with Christopher but she also wished that he might be a little more supportive of her.

At least she had Tacroy on her side; he had been assigned to take her to Versoix. It appeared that he was back in everyone’s good graces and Millie was grateful. There were only two people she really knew in the Castle and considering that Christopher didn’t even see her off at the train station ( _definitely_ jealous), it was good to have a friendly face for her first school adventure.

And what an adventure! She had never been on a train before, much less a boat. There were oceans that looked impossibly deep compared to the wells Millie had glimpsed in her world. And once they boarded the train in France, she got to see mountains that were higher than anything she’d ever seen before. The journey took almost two days, but Millie could have spent a month traveling. It seemed that every hour brought something new to exclaim over with Tacroy, who looked like he was enjoying the trip as much as she was. They were both free now, Millie realized, although free from very different circumstances.

The last leg of the journey was by carriage, which was Millie’s least favorite part. She thought it was unfair that she had to sit inside where there was a real, live horse pulling the carriage that she could be making a lifelong connection with (like Book Millie and her faithful pony, Pippa). But then the carriage turned a corner and Millie forgot the horse entirely.

The school was not brick, like Lowood House. There was no ivy to be seen, covering the walls or otherwise. There was a distinct lack of manicured fields for Games.

What she saw was a castle with high stone walls and a high tower at each corner. It looked like a smaller version of Chrestomanci Castle.

Millie had almost forgotten Tacroy was there until he said “Well, this looks impressive, doesn’t it?”

She brightened a bit at Tacroy’s comment. It was a nice building. There was a lake not too far away, and she liked the idea of being so close to the water now that she knew how lovely it was. She could certainly have a good time there.

There were women waiting for them at the door. _Teachers_ , Millie thought. One of them stepped forward and she thought with an excited chill, _Headmistress_.

“Welcome to l’Ecole Léman, Miss Jones. I am the Headmistress, Madame Thierry,” the woman said with a light accent. She glanced at Tacroy in a way that reminded Millie of Miss Rosalie. “And you are?”

Tacroy offered his hand to her to shake. “I’m Mordecai Roberts.” Millie started; she was as unused to his real name as she was to her new one.

The woman shook his hand gingerly, looking even more disdainful than Miss Rosalie, if that was possible. “Er, yes. I take it his eminence did not accompany Miss Jones?”

Millie didn’t pay attention to his answer. She wanted to get inside, she wanted to have _adventures_. When the Headmistress started to lead her towards the door, Millie felt like she might die of the excitement

She turned back just once and saw Tacroy waiting in the doorway, waving goodbye.

* * *

_ii. Millie of Lowood House_

Millie shared a dormitory with three other girls and she was horribly intimidated by all of them.

The first night there, they lined up to introduce themselves, each with a more impressive title than the last.

“Mary. My father’s the British ambassador,” said the girl with red hair.

“Rebecca. Daughter of the Duke of Devonshire,” said the tall, thin one.

“Thérèse. Granddaughter of the last queen of France,” said the one who looked quite normal aside from that.

Millie was tempted to say “The Living Asheth, her bodily representation on this earth,” but she knew that wouldn’t do.

“I’m Millie,” she said. “I’m Gabriel de Witt’s ward.”

There was a look of mildly impressed recognition from the ambassador’s daughter, but that was it.

“Oh,” said Rebecca slowly. “He’s that nine-lived enchanter, isn’t he?”

“Seven now, actually,” Millie corrected her quickly. It was strange, but Millie could tell just by looking at them that they didn’t have any magic. It was probably why Gabriel’s name wasn’t important to them; his role didn’t have any impact on their lives.

“You’ll have that one in the corner,” Thérèse said distractedly, gesturing to a bed that was slightly set off from the three others. Millie nodded and dragged her trunk over to her new bed. By the time she was finished, the other three girls had already left.

Book Millie had made lifelong friends the second she entered her dormitory. Millie was finding it much harder in real life. Rebecca and Thérèse didn’t seem to care for her and rarely talked to her when they were in the dormitory with her. Millie had arrived midway through the term and it seemed as though no one wanted to add to their existing group of friends.

Mary was nice to her, though. She would sit with Millie in some of their classes and make conversation. It turned out that her father moved her family often for work and she missed England terribly. She asked Millie all sorts of questions about her life at Chrestomanci Castle (which Millie did a dismal job of answering).

“Is your name short for Millicent?” Mary asked her one day.

Millie had to stop and think for a moment. She had only thought of herself as Millie; she’d never gone so far to consider that it was short for something else. Names weren’t really that important to her, really. She never knew her first name or the parents who gave it to her. But that name, and the life that would have gone with it, were never meant for her. Same with her time as the Living Asheth. She was the Goddess and now she was Millie. There might be other names in the future.

Mary was waiting for an answer so Millie quickly said “Yes, but I only go by ‘Millie.’ ‘Millicent’ is such a dreadfully long name, isn’t it?”

That made Mary laugh and Millie felt satisfied. Millie, but never Millicent. She was adding something new to her story every day.

* * *

_iii. Millie Plays the Game_

L’Ecole Léman was not much like Lowood House.

This realization hit Millie one morning in March and once she thought of it she couldn’t stop noticing the differences. It was as though she had been in a haze waiting for something, _anything_ to happen to her like it had to Book Millie.

On the surface, they were similar. They were all-girl schools in the countryside run by stern headmistresses (Millie supposed. She hadn’t seen much of Madame Thierry since her first day). But that was where the similarities ended.

The classes were different, to start with. Admittedly, there wasn’t much in the books about the actual classes, but Millie got the sense that the students of Lowood House were _learning_ things. Book Millie got into that dreadful argument with Edwina after a history class, and she was so brave when she accidentally burned herself in the chemistry laboratory.

There weren’t any classes like that at l’Ecole Léman. Oh, there was French and literature; Millie had learned a lot about contemporary French poetry. But the other classes didn’t seem particularly useful to her.

Millie went to cooking classes where she burned everything that touched the stove. She was taught every fashionable dance and always performed it in the least fashionable way.  She fumbled over drawings of flowers when she wanted to paint the forest from Series Eleven. Games were absolutely forbidden, except for the February trip to the Alps for skiing lessons, where Millie fell down a slope, broke her ankle, and was sniggered at by seventh year girls.

Millie supposed to that if she _really_ wanted to, she could have excelled in these classes, but she didn’t see any reason to. It was all so dull and she honestly couldn’t think that there would ever be a time in her life when she would have to know how to prepare a soufflé.

What she really wanted to learn was magic. Ever since she found out that she had power that belonged to her and no one else, Millie wanted to use it. The only problem was that she didn’t know _how_. She tried to light a candle once and the flames shot up so high that the ceiling was briefly set on fire. What she needed was instruction, but magic wasn’t even mentioned in the school’s curriculum.

It didn’t help that she kept getting letters from Christopher. They were very tiresome letters that were always about not getting along with Gabriel, but all Millie could concentrate on was that Christopher was getting magic lessons and worse, that he hated it. She would give anything to be in his place, and instead she was stuck learning the right way to fill out a dance card.

Worse, she had to learn the proper way to act. And not ‘proper’ in the way that her etiquette instructor meant it. She needed to learn how to avoid her classmates. Most of the girls were harmless and ignored her. But then there were the ones who made snide comments about her when they thought she wasn’t listening. It was usually Rebecca and Thérèse who did this; Mary would spend time with her, but Millie was seeing less and less of her as term went on.  It was horrible because she didn’t know _why._

After a particularly bad day (she was “accidentally” tripped by the two girls when they were leaving French class), Millie ran back to her dormitory, intent on reading one of the Millie books to cheer her up. Book Millie had a solution for everything; maybe she would have one for this. She had just pulled out the first one when Rebecca walked in. Her eyes zeroed in on the book Millie holding.

“Are those the _Millie_ books,” she asked, her voice dripping with disdain.

And in that moment, Millie knew that she could tell the truth and give them another reason to tease her. Or she could lie and hope that they might forget about her.

It was really an easy decision.

“They were given to me because of the name,” she said loftily. “They really are the most childish books, aren’t they?”

The books went to the bottom of her trunk and she didn’t look at them again.

* * *

_iv. Millie’s Finest Hour_

Millie hoped that by finally understanding the girls of l’Ecole Léman—all the scheming and gossiping—she might find a way to triumph. After all, Book Millie succeeded because she always understood social situations perfectly (a little too perfectly, Millie was starting to think), so why shouldn’t it be the same for real life?

By end of term, Millie found out how very wrong she had been.

Knowing her classmates’ motives made her more aware of when some of them were after her. Worse, she fully realized why now. Yes, she was plain and quiet, but she had come mid-year and was a ward of a (minor, most of the other girls would think) political figure, and that put her in the spotlight. And once she was noticed, her classmates found all her flaws and picked at them.

The best she could hope for was that someone even more disreputable than herself might come along to distract them from her. Millie couldn’t bear the thought of some other girl being teased like she was, but she also knew that defending a new girl would not endear her to her classmates.

So Millie chose to keep her head down and not bring any attention to herself. She went to bed late and was the first one out of the dormitory in the morning. She kept to her studies, never too smart or too dumb in class.

Of course, she didn’t have to try _too_ hard to be average in her classes, given how bored she was. French was still unpronounceable and drawing a disaster and it would be the same curriculum for another four years.

Millie shuddered at the thought of it. As the term went on, she made a list of the things she wanted to learn. History was on there, since she knew nothing about England. She was learning about politics, but the information she picked up was more like gossip and she never had any context.

Above all things, magic was at the top of the list. It felt like there was power bursting out of her, begging to be used. At night, with the curtains of her four-poster bed pulled tight, she made her pillows and sheets levitate just for the joy of it.

Millie felt stuck at the school and would fly away if she could. But maybe it was supposed to feel that way; Book Millie never really left Lowood House.

But hols were coming, she told herself. Once she got through her exams, such as they were, she could go to Chrestomanci Castle and finally be free.

Her very last exam was to give a speech in French class. As all the other girls got up to speak, she listened attentively and waited for her turn. But when she got up to speak, she saw that no one was listening to her. Girls were talking quietly, or staring into space. A couple looked at her when she spoke, but then went back to doodling in their notebooks. The instructor did not to stop them.

No one noticed her and those who did only teased her.

 _I was the Living Asheth_ , she wanted to scream at them. _I might have been a child and a prisoner but I had armies and worshippers who would do whatever I asked._

But she wasn’t anymore.

So she kept quiet. And she started to plan.

* * *

_v. Millie in the Upper 4 th_

Two things were going to happenwhen she got to Chrestomanci Castle: she was going to tell Gabriel that she wanted to go to another school and that she wanted magic lessons like Christopher was getting.

Her first day at the Castle for hols, she marched right up to Gabriel’s office. She had prepared a speech on the journey back and was ready to make her case.

“I’m so sorry, dear,” Yolande said when Millie walked to the door of his office. “Gabriel’s not in. He’s in Series Four right now.”

Millie didn’t have a back-up plan, but she didn’t let that stop her. “Do you know when he’ll return?” she asked, using her most grown-up voice.

“Hm,” Yolande glanced at the calendar on her desk. “Not until next Tuesday at the earliest. Beastly situation they’ve got going on over there right now. Quite literally.”

“Oh.” Millie deflated a bit. “Could I leave him a note?”

Yolande handed her paper and a pen and Millie spent twenty minutes putting her speech into writing. She did wish that l’Ecole Léman had a class on persuasive writing; she felt that what she wrote was rather lacking.

By the time Gabriel returned ten days later, her note had either been lost or he hadn’t bothered to read it because he never got back to her. She tried going back to his office only to find once again that he was out and no one knew when he would return. This went on for _weeks_. She stopped leaving notes after the fourth one was ignored.

Millie understood that Gabriel was important, but it was bordering on ridiculous. It was like he was never in the Castle during the day, although from the way Christopher talked about him, one would think that Gabriel spent his time following Christopher around and nagging him constantly.

“But I just want to talk to him,” she begged Miss Rosalie, running after her into the library.

“As do many other people,” Miss Rosalie said distractedly.

“Yes, but I live here!” Millie felt like she was going to explode from the insanity of it all. “It shouldn’t be that hard!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Millie,” Miss Rosalie told her. “Now where did I put that book on warlock registration policies? I’m meeting Gabriel in half an hour and he will need to reference it for tomorrow’s conference.”

“Will you tell him that I need to see him?”

“Hm,” Miss Rosalie looked up from the book she had grabbed. “Oh yes, of course,” she murmured and walked out of the room.

Millie collapsed onto a couch in frustration. The grown-ups here were just as bad as the ones at school. Tacroy would have listened to her, she thought wearily, but he was in Series Eight and wasn’t due back for _months_. She was never going to talk to Gabriel, much less leave that school. It was hopeless.

“Why are you in such a bad mood?”

She turned and saw Christopher glaring at her from the doorway.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Millie pointed out.

Christopher sighed dramatically. “You would look like this too if you’d been having lessons with Gabriel.”

Millie sat up straight. “You’ve been having lessons with Gabriel?” she asked.

“Every day at two o’clock.” Christopher said it like it was the worst thing to ever happen to him.

“You knew I wanted to see him! Why didn’t you tell me and I could have come along!” Millie couldn’t believe that the person who had known her the longest was acting like this.

“It must have slipped my mind,” Christopher said dismissively. “And anyway, I don’t know why on earth you’d ever want to talk to Gabriel.”

He looked at her so disdainfully when he said it--just like Rebecca-- that Millie burst into tears on the spot.

To his credit, Christopher immediately exchanged that look for a much more concerned one. “I’m sorry,” he sputtered. “I didn’t mean it!” Millie could see through her tears that he had run over to where she was sitting to hover awkwardly above her.

Millie continued to cry; it had been such a long time since she’d last had a good cry, and it was making her feel a bit better. By the time Christopher awkwardly patted her shoulder, she was just sniffling.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and he really looked as though he meant it.

“It’s all right,” Millie said. “It’s just that I’ve been trying for weeks now to talk to Gabriel and I need to tell him that I can’t go back to that school.”

Christopher sat next to her on the couch and Millie told him everything that had happened at l’Ecole Léman. He listened intently, nodding and asking questions in all the right places. It felt wonderful to finally have someone to talk to.

“I’ll tell him all this, I promise,” he said.

“Thank you,” Millie told him. She smiled at him and Christopher smiled back.

“Don’t mention it. I’m still paying you back for Throgmorten, after all.”

Millie didn’t tell him that while she appreciated his help, finding a book titled _Millie Triumphs Over Her Horrible School_ would be even better.

* * *

_vi. Head Girl Millie_

Nothing had changed.

Classes were dull, Millie was ignored most days and teased on the others, and she couldn’t get anything out of Gabriel.

Christopher had tried his best, though. He sent her a letter son after term started detailing the fight he and Gabriel had over the subject. According to Gabriel, l’Ecole Léman had a sterling reputation, Millie was having trouble adjusting to her new world, and it was none of Christopher’s business.

Millie put down Christopher’s letter and sighed. She skipped dancing class when the letter arrived, claiming she had a head ache that made dancing impossible. Now she really did have a head ache.

“Are you alright?”

Mary had come into their dormitory. She was holding a stack of French books and looking at Millie with concern.

“I’m fine,” Millie assured her. She watched Mary as she deposited her books on her bed and then went to the mirror to fix her hair. She wondered how Mary could be so at home here when it all felt so strange to Millie.

“Mary,” Millie asked, struck by a sudden thought. “Do you like this school?”

“I suppose,” Mary hummed, tucking a curl behind her ear. “Why do you ask?”

Millie took a deep breath and admitted “I hate it. I don’t know why anyone would choose to be here.”

The relief she felt at confessing this fled when she saw the look Mary was giving her. “Millie,” she said slowly. “No one chooses to come here. We’re all sent here by our parents so that we aren’t in the way.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“My father’s a diplomat,” said Mary, sitting on her bed to face Millie. “He and my mother are busy all the time and it’s easier for them if I’m here. A lot of girls have parents in politics like mine, or they’re like Rebecca, whose father wants her to get a proper education.  It may not have been our choice, but it’s not close to the worst school I’ve been to.”

Millie didn’t have much to say to that; she’d never considered that her classmates might feel the same way about the school that she did. Mary got up to leave but turned back to look at her. “I’m sorry so many people have been cruel to you. But if there’s one thing my father’s taught me, it’s that people are vipers. It’s best to learn that now.”

“I’m never going to be like that,” Millie swore.

Mary paused. “No, I don’t suppose you will.” And then she walked out the door.

Her conversation with Mary left Millie in a gloom for the next two weeks. She felt so bad that she almost didn’t notice how everyone was staring at her when she entered the common room after art class.

But for once, the look they were giving her wasn’t one of contempt. Instead, they looked as though they were in awe. “You have a visitor,” someone said, and then everyone’s heads whipped toward the window. Millie followed their gaze and was shocked to see Christopher standing in the garden.

It was interesting to see him the way her classmates did, Millie thought as she walked out into the garden. He _was_ handsome, although Millie felt as though she knew him too well to ever really find him attractive.

(That her heart skipped a beat when he smiled at her had nothing to do with how he looked. She was just glad to see a friend).

“What on earth are you doing here,” she asked. “How did you get here?”

“I’ve been practicing transporting myself,” he said, and any relief she felt at seeing him was quickly replaced by the familiar jealousy that he was learning magic and she wasn’t. “But that’s not important. Gabriel and I had another fight yesterday, and it was the last straw. So I’ve come up with a plan.”

Millie assumed he was going to say something like “We’ll corner Gabriel and let him hear your side of the story” or “We’ll research an acceptable replacement school that you and Gabriel approve of.”

She did not expect him to say “We’re going to run away. One of the Anywheres is filled with oceans. I bet we can find a little island to live on and we won’t have to worry about anyone bothering us ever again.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth she felt suffocated. Run away to an island with Christopher? Just the two of them? What on earth would they do there? She seriously doubted that little islands came with libraries and magic instructors.

“Are you mad,” she hissed at him. “That’s the last thing I want to do!”

“But I thought you wanted to get away from Gabriel,” he said, looking frustrated.

“No,” she told him, “That’s what you want. What _I_ want is for someone to listen to me, which apparently not even you are capable of.”

Christopher rolled his eyes, which only served to reinforce her point. “I’m leaving this world. I can’t have Gabriel bossing me around anymore,” he said angrily. “You can come with me or you can stay here.”

“Well! If my only other option is to listen to you complain about Gabriel for the rest of my life, I’m staying here,” Millie shouted at him.

She stormed away, ignoring Christopher yelling after her as she left. She ran inside, briefly registering that her classmates were giggling at her as she passed (they must have watched the whole thing, she realized with a sick feeling).

No matter where she went, Millie thought, she was never able to make her own choices. Not at l’Ecole Léman and not even with Christopher. No one was going to help her. Just like that night at the Temple when Bethi died.

Just like the Temple…

Millie knew what she had to do.

It took her barely any time to pack. She stuffed her most practical clothes into a small bag she found among Mary’s things.

(She left the _Millie_ books in her trunk.)

She wrote a hurried note for Mary, apologizing for taking the bag and with a request to please tell Madame Thierry that she was withdrawing from school, effective immediately.

Millie went to stand in the middle of the room. She closed her eyes and concentrated very hard on all the little cracks between the worlds, and when she opened them she saw a little patch of darkness by her bed.

Millie walked over to it and peered in. It was the Anywheres, all right. They were foggy and forbidding, but the mountains and the valleys filled her with hope.

She hesitated before stepping through, but Millie knew there was no reason to stay. All she had in this world was a school she hated, a guardian who ignored her, and a friend who wouldn’t listen.

She didn’t know what was out there, but it had to be better than here.

At the very least, it would be an adventure.


End file.
